Chapter 7 — SIX DAYS

Here is what happened in the six days, in order, because the order is everything.

**Sunday.** Sophia coughs twice at dinner. Nobody thinks anything.

**Monday.** She coughs through the night. Claire — my wife — is in Chicago from Monday to Friday, has been for two years, works for a logistics firm off Wacker. I text her at eleven at night. She says give it a day.

**Tuesday.** Sarah comes into the kitchen while I am eating standing up before a night shift and says, *she needs to see somebody.* I say she has a cold. Sarah says, *she needs to see somebody, Mark.* I say okay, if it's the same on Thursday.

I did not hear the sentence she was actually saying. That is chapter thirteen.

**Wednesday.** Sarah asks me to keep Sophia out of the back hallway. I laugh. Not cruelly — I laughed the way you laugh at somebody being fussy. She did not laugh.

**Thursday.** Sophia is worse. I work a double because Kravitz called out. Sarah texts Claire seven times. Claire texts back twice.

**Friday.** I go to work at seven. Sarah is at the top of the stairs when I leave and she says one thing to me.

Sarah: When is Claire back.

Mark: Tomorrow night.

Sarah: That's too late.

I said, and I have to write it exactly:

Mark: Too late for what, Sarah.

And she looked at me for about three seconds and then she went back into her room and shut the door.

Then I went to work, and at some point that afternoon she put my daughter out on the patio.